In January, I usually look to the future. But winter has a way of slowing you down. Fewer distractions. Sharper thinking. On cold mornings, I like to imagine a walk through a small, fictional graveyard. Not of people, but of smart building and smart city technologies that once mattered deeply, worked remarkably well, and are now… gone.
Not disgraced. Not ridiculous. Just finished.
The first headstone belongs to a lighting system I still miss. It lived in a prominent tower in the United States and, in its prime, it was one of the most elegant combinations of lighting control, sensing, and data intelligence I’ve ever worked with. It didn’t just dim lights. It understood space. Occupancy. Behaviour. Potential. It proved that lighting could be infrastructure, not decoration.
Then it was acquired. Folded into something much larger. The product didn’t so much die as dissolve. Its ideas live on everywhere now, embedded into platforms, standards, and expectations. But the thing itself is gone. The lesson etched into the stone is a familiar one: acquisition is not the same as continuity. At industrial scale, sharp ideas don’t break through. They get rounded off.
A little further on is a workplace app I genuinely loved. Thoughtful design. Human-centric to its core. It solved real problems before “experience” became a LinkedIn obsession. It understood that offices are social systems before they are assets.
It didn’t fail. The market moved underneath it. Point solutions were replaced by platforms. Integrations beat elegance. It died not because it was wrong, but because it was early and refused to become something messier. Its lesson is harder: timing matters as much as insight, and purity is rarely rewarded at scale.
Two newer graves sit side by side, their inscriptions deliberately understated.
One was an AI-led planning and development platform. Clever, ambitious, technically sound. It promised to compress years of uncertainty into weeks of clarity. It even did so, in controlled conditions. But it ran headlong into the reality that planning is not a technical problem. It is a political, cultural, and institutional one. The product worked. The system didn’t. The lesson here is brutal and necessary: software does not reform governance by existing harder.
The other was a construction technology giant, born with extraordinary funding and even greater confidence. It set out to industrialise building delivery end-to-end. Factories, software, supply chains, all orchestrated into a single vision. It collapsed under its own ambition. Too vertical. Too fast. Too certain. The lesson is carved deep: construction does not forgive over-integration, and physics always wins in the end.
This graveyard isn’t a warning against innovation. It’s evidence of progress.
These ideas didn’t vanish. They composted. Their DNA is everywhere now. In standards. In procurement language. In what clients quietly expect without knowing why. The industry didn’t abandon them. It learned from them.
The future of smart buildings and cities won’t be defined by perfect platforms or totalising visions. It will be quieter than that. More modular. More interoperable. Less charismatic. More durable.
Progress, it turns out, doesn’t look like immortality. It looks like making room for the next idea to stand on your shoulders, then walking calmly into the frost.
In Dr Marson’s monthly column, he’ll be chronicling his thoughts and opinions on the latest developments, trends, and challenges in the Smart Buildings industry and the wider world of construction. Whether you’re a seasoned pro or just starting out, you’re sure to find something of interest here.
Something to share? Contact the author: column@matthewmarson.com
About the author:
Matthew Marson is an experienced leader, working at the intersection of technology, sustainability, and the built environment. He was recognised by the Royal Academy of Engineering as Young Engineer of the Year for his contributions to the global Smart Buildings industry. Having worked on some of the world’s leading smart buildings and cities projects, Matthew is a keynote speaker at international industry events related to emerging technology, net zero design and lessons from projects. He is author of The Smart Building Advantage and is published in a variety of journals, earning a doctorate in Smart Buildings.